


The Last of You

by Wallwalker



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Community: ff_exchange, F/M, Love/Hate Relationship, Missing Scene, POV Second Person, Rare Pairings, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-29
Updated: 2012-08-29
Packaged: 2017-11-13 03:43:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/499087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wallwalker/pseuds/Wallwalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aeris never wanted your help. That never stopped you from trying to help her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last of You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Licoriceallsorts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Licoriceallsorts/gifts).



> Written for a prompt on DW, for Tseng/Aerith. I've had this idea for a while, and now it's actually finished, so yay!  
> (Also, I don't think I'll ever get used to not spelling her name as Aeris, so I'm sticking with that for the story. Sorry!)

You find Aeris north of Gongaga, knee-deep in a swollen, muddy river. No surprise - you hadn't expected her to get far. When you learned from your village informant that she had left her friends behind, you knew that she would most likely try to strike out on her own, half-cocked. It's the sort of thing that you have seen her do so many times over the years that you're used to it by now.

"I wouldn't go any further if I were you," you say, just loud enough to be heard over the river - she still starts, but not enough to lose her footing. Good. "That river's moving too quickly, and it's too deep. You'd be dragged under in a matter of minutes."

"Tseng," she says, "That's you, isn't it? I thought you were gone."

"So did I," you answer. "But we were both wrong, it seems." You take a few steps forward. "You don't have to be so nervous. I'm alone."

"Does that matter?" she asks, still not looking back. Her voice lacks the vitality that it always had before, even when she was angry - even when she was a young girl, running away from you as she screamed that she didn't want to be special. Not that it had changed anything. "Don't come any closer. I know what I'm doing."

"Do you? Then why don't you enlighten me."

"You wouldn't understand." She took another small step; it takes all of your willpower not to leap forward and pull her from the water. But she hasn't lost her footing, not yet. "I'll find a way across, and I'll get to... to where they're telling me I have to go."

"Not without my help, you won't." If this is how things are going to be, you suppose you can accept it. You're not even surprised, not at this point.

"Yes, I will," she said, more forcefully. "I can do this alone -"

"Aeris." You are exhausted, and in no mood for her games. "You can't travel by yourself. You can't even cross this river alone. Turn around and let me help you." 

She still doesn't turn to look at you, and you can see by the slump of her shoulders that she's just as tired as you are. She needs your help as much as you need her company, right now. "I'm fine," she said. "I'm doing something important, don't you see? The Planet will help me, it has to."

"Yes," you say, the words cold and sharp as a scalpel. "It's done so _much_ for you."

Her entire body goes tense, ready to fight. "Just go _away,_ all right? You've followed me your entire life, can't you just leave me be this one time?"

"No, I can't. I'm not going to leave you stranded." You take a cautious step down, then another. You're close enough to grab her now, if you were of a mind to. "Now, come on. Stop fighting this, and let me _help_ you -"

"I don't need your help!" she finally explodes, turning to look at you over her shoulder. Her big green eyes are so cold, so cold and so tired. "I don't need it! I've never needed it!"

"I know," you say calmly, heading her off as she stops to take a breath. "You don't need my help. You've never needed my help and you wish that I'd just go away. You've always wished I'd leave you alone." You reach out your hand to her, then; she's close enough that you could touch her, but you'll do this on her terms. "But that hasn't changed anything, has it?"

She sighs, wipes something on her face away with the back of her hand. "No," she says, giving in. She carefully turns around and takes your hand, allows you to help her out of the shallow water. "It hasn't." 

"Then come along."

\---

You take the car all the way back to the chopper. Aeris barely says a word as you drive, not out loud at least - she sits and moves her lips as if she were praying, her head bowed. As if the Planet ever did a good thing for anyone, you think, sourly. As if the gods that your ancestors worshipped could have stopped Shinra from coming and doing everything short of genocide that a nation could do to destroy another.

And yet you are here, and you are helping Aeris. If only you could have convinced her to listen to you, to trust you to help her. You could have given her a life in comfort, and maybe - just maybe - you could've convinced Hojo and the old President that she was more valuable outside of the confines of a lab than inside. Your voice would've been louder and more real than the faraway whispers of her Planet... but somehow those were the voices she always trusted, and you will never understand why.

It isn't until the two of you arrive at the chopper that she stirs. "How did you survive?"

The scar on your shoulder stings with the memory. "With some difficulty," you admit.

She nods slightly, and there's a light smile on her face. You think for a moment that she's about to tell you that she's glad that you survived, anything to show you that there's something under all of this stern unhappiness... but then her face hardens again, and she shakes her head. "You should tell the other Turks that you're still alive."

"What I tell my agents is my own business," you say, your voice curt and flat and sharp as a knife. 

It should have been the end of the conversation, but Aeris doesn't back down. "You should," she insists. "Especially the girl, she _likes_ you -"

"They need discipline," you snap, harsher than you meant, "and Elena needs it most of all. I'll come back once they've proven they can do their jobs without me."

She does smile then, but it's cryptic and distant, and you know immediately that it's not meant for you. "I'm glad," she says, and looks away.

You curse under your breath. As if she has any room to speak to you about abandoning the other Turks. You're sure that they had no idea that she'd run away, that she was trying to ford a river that would've killed her. They never would have let her go alone. But you're as tired as she is, now, and that's a battle that you don't want to begin at that moment. "Come on," you say instead. "We have a narrow window to get out of here before we're spotted."

"Spotted? By whom?"

"Dangerous men," you say lightly. "Former employers of mine." Before your injury you were employed by Shinra Corporation, little more than a peon, and they would want you back if they knew you still lived - that was another reason you hadn't told your subordinates about your survival. Best to make sure that they finish their jobs, and find them in the proper time. But now, since the other executives believe that you've died in action, you answer only to the one man who knows that you're still alive. And Rufus has little patience for sentimental matters; the only reason he is permitting you to do this now is because he values his most faithful employee and was willing to indulge a small whim. "Now, let's go."

She shakes her head, but follows you nonetheless.

\---

The chopper's a tiny, two-man affair. You sit in the pilot's seat; you started out flying things like this in Shinra, you know them very well. Aeris sits as copilot, and before takeoff you instruct her to keep an eye on certain dials; you can't teach her the ins and outs of flying a helicopter in five minutes, which is all the time you have, but she takes in what you have to tell her with a solemn face, and answers every question correctly when you quiz her. She really is a clever young lady, you think, with a swell of the old proprietary pride that you know you have no right to feel. Then again, she has as much interest in getting wherever you're going alive as you do. Of course she'd do what she could to ensure it.

Aeris points out your destination on an old map, her finger drifting over it, her eyes tightly shut as if she's listening - and she probably IS listening, knowing her. It rankles you; you've never liked navigating by _feel,_ and it's especially terrible when the feelings aren't even yours. But her finger comes down on the map, just above a tiny village that barely shows itself there, and when she opens her eyes and looks at the place - far to the north of them, just south of a massive forest that's marked with company warnings to stay clear - she nods. "That's it," she says. That's the right place."

You look at the markings. _Bone Village,_ the dot says - an old archeological dig. Why would going to such an out-of-the-way settlement be so important to her? "All right. Let's fly."

Aeris settles into her seat, puts her headset on. She nods at you, her eyes exhausted and somehow sad. What was going on in her mind? The question haunts you for a long time, until you put it aside out of simple necessity. The flight's a difficult one in a full-sized helicopter, and this one's considerably smaller; you don't want to take unnecessary risks.

The ride itself is smooth enough, at least. A bit hairy, in places - the updrafts are hell on your tiny craft - but you keep things as steady as you can, and Aeris does everything you tell her to do. She never complains about the constant thrumming, and as best you could tell she wasn't even the slightest bit airsick. She's a natural.

You compliment her on it once you've landed, a few kilometers from the dig's limits. "If only you'd let me help you earlier," you say as you remove your headgear and goggles, "I could've given you a job as a pilot."

"You wouldn't have done it. Professor Hojo wouldn't have let you."

"I don't work for Hojo, and I don't like seeing good people wasted."

"He would've taken me back sooner or later, though. He almost did." She sighs. "It was always a matter of time."

You get the nagging feeling that she isn't just talking about Hojo. "Aeris," you say, and reach for her headset, stripping it off. She flinches slightly, but doesn't stop you. "You're not coming here for the dig. Why did you want me to bring you here?"

"I can't tell you." She gives you another small, tired smile. "If I did you'd try to drag me away."

You shake your head. "I made you a promise. Have I ever broken a promise that I made to you?"

"You never had to. You're too good at bending them."

She climbs out of the helicopter, and you suppose that you should go, now. She doesn't want you here. You should let her go and carry out her plan. You've done what you said you'd do....

You sigh and unstrap yourself, and follow her. You can't let it go. Not like this.

She turns and waits for you as you approach her. That's something, at least. "Tell me, Aeris," you say. It's not a plea - a good Turk never begs a day in his life - but it's as close as you can come to one. "Let me help you. You know I'll do anything in my power -"

"That's just it," she says. Her eyes gleam up at you, narrowed in irritation as they are. "There's nothing anyone can do except for me."

"Aeris," you say again, your frustration about to overcome your composure. Frustration, and something else - she's so close to you, closer than she's let you be since she was a little girl, and there are still a lot of emotions that you can't quite define, twisting in your gut and your chest. 

You're close enough to touch her when _she_ reaches out for you, and you have to fight down the urge to push her away, to fight back. She's long past the age when the worst she could do was some particularly vicious hair-pulling, and perfectly capable of harming you. She's given you several black eyes and broken a few of your operatives' bones more than once. This time, though, she only grabs at your arm, her grip not tight enough to do any real damage, but still enough to hurt. "Why did it have to be you?" she says, looking up at you, her eyes regaining some of that anger in the end. "Of all the people I've ever met, why did you have to be _you_?"

You don't give her any pithy answers, not this time. "You know why," you say instead, and you make no move to pull your arm away.

She glares at you. "I know I should be grateful," she says, and again you have the uncanny feeling that she's not talking to you, but past you. "But I'm _not._ " And before you can bring yourself to say anything else, she grabs at your tie with your free hand and pushes herself up on tiptoe, and then her lips are dry and rough and warm against yours. She bites at your lips and makes an angry noise deep in her throat as you kiss her back - because you do kiss her back, you can't quite seem to stop yourself.

She breaks away, and there's still anger in her eyes, and the beginning of tears. "This is the last time you'll see me," she says. "Don't follow me." Then she turns and runs off, straight to the edge of the settlement.

You stand there for a few seconds more, your lips stinging from the kiss, before you turn away. If that's really how she wants it, then it's time to go. You'll find her later. You always have, and you always will, no matter how much she tries to deny it.

\---

Only later, when you finally meet your subordinates again, do you find out that you were the last man to speak with Aeris while she still lived. You try to be surprised. You try to pretend that it wasn't written on her face, that there was some shred of doubt. But that, apparently, is one more thing you can't bring yourself to do.

You fly to the place where she was buried, at the bottom of a deep lake, and throw your company ID after her. An odd memorial, but she was the reason that you were finally able to leave the bloated corporation that was Shinra behind. It's the only memorial that fits.

"Well," you say, after a long silence, "you were right about not seeing you again. I expect that would make you happier if you were alive, but... well." You shake your head. "Good-bye, Aeris."

(You swear you feel someone tugging at your hair as you walk away - a sharp sort of tug, somewhere between playful and angry - but when you turn around, there's no one there.)


End file.
